Has abortion role been overblown in U.S. healthcare debate?
A new poll by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life suggests that concern about federal funding for abortion is very low on the list of factors driving opposition to President Barack Obama’s effort to overhaul America’s healthcare system.
The results of the poll, released on Thursday, show that just 3 percent of healthcare opponents cited abortion funding as their main reason for opposing congressional healthcare proposals.
The biggest reasons, cited by 27 percent of respondents to an open-ended question about their opposition, were that the overhaul would be too expensive and lead to higher deficits and taxes. Another 27 percent said they did not want government involvement in healthcare.
The nationwide poll of more than 1,000 Americans was conducted from Nov. 12 to 15.
The poll’s publication comes as the U.S. Senate prepares to begin debate on its version of a healthcare bill that does not include language approved earlier this month by the House that would strengthen the existing prohibition on using federal funds for abortion.
Many analysts say the abortion issue — which has been fanned by conservative evangelicals associated with the Republican Party and Catholic clergy whose flock lean to the Democratic Party — threatens to unravel Obama’s top domestic priority.
from FaithWorld:
Almost two million vanish from Obama’s estimate of U.S. Muslims
Almost two million people have inexplicably disappeared from the estimates of the U.S. Muslim population that President Barack Obama has given recently. In his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 4, he spoke about "nearly seven million American Muslims in our country today." On Sunday, the Karachi daily Dawn published an interview with him where he said "we have five million Muslims."
There was no explanation for the change, but his reason for citing the figure seemed to be the same. Shortly before his Cairo speech, Obama told the French television channel Canal Plus that "one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." He cited no figure there but mentioned seven million in Cairo three days later.
Many blogs, FaithWorld included, questioned that figure and noted that estimates of the U.S. Muslim population range from 1.8 to 7-8 million. The U.S. Census Bureau cannot ask about religion on a mandatory basis but refers on its website to a Pew Forum study pegging Muslims at 0.6% of the population. The CIA World Factbook uses the same percentage figure. It translates into about 1.8 million.
Speaking to Dawn, Obama lowered his estimate but made his original point again. He said: "We have Muslim Americans who are doing extraordinary things. In fact, their educational attainment and income is generally above the average here in the United States. We have Muslim members of Congress. And, in fact, we have 5 million Muslims, which would make us larger than many other countries that consider themselves Muslim countries."
The downsizing puts the U.S. even lower on the this Wikipedia list of countries according to the size of their Muslim population, from 32nd place (after Kazakhstan and before the current #32 Tajikistan) to 38th (between Chad and Turkmenistan).
In the interview, Obama also spoke a bit about his visit to Pakistan as a student in 1981 that caused some confusion and speculation in the end phase of the 2008 campaign. Dawn's Washington correspondent Anwar Iqbal asked Obama if he planned to visit Pakistan soon and the president responded:
from FaithWorld:
U.S. ideology stable, “culture trench warfare” ahead?
The U.S. Democratic Party has gained a larger following over the past two decades but America's ideological landscape has remained largely unchanged over the past two decades, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. You can see the analysis here.
What is of interest for readers of this blog may be the implications of this "cultural trench warfare" -- with neither side gaining much ground from the other -- for red-hot social issues such as abortion rights and the future prospects for both the Republicans and the Democrats.
"The Democratic Party's advantage in party identification has widened over the past two decades, but the share of Americans who describe their political views as liberal, conservative or moderate has remained stable during the same period. Only about one-in-five Americans currently call themselves liberal (21 percent), while 38 percent say they are conservative and 36 percent describe themselves as moderate. This is virtually unchanged from recent years; when George W. Bush was first elected president, 18 percent of Americans said they were liberal, 36 percent were conservative and 38 percent considered themselves moderate," the report, released late on Tuesday, says.
On the divisive issue of abortion rights, the report, using survey data from October, said 57 percent of Americans believed it should be legal. Breaking opinion up by ideology, it found that 43 percent of conservatives were in favour of it being legal while 77 percent of self-described liberals held that view.
This is not surprising -- there are many Americans who regard themselves as economic or "tough on crime" or national security conservatives who still support abortion rights. What may surprise some is that 19 percent of liberals feel it should be illegal. These could be people influenced by Catholic social teaching or other trends who regard themselves as liberal on most issues but not this one.
For all the talk of an emerging evangelical center, the report says that: "White evangelical Protestants are the most conservative Republicans: 79 percent describe their political views as conservative, compared with 17 percent who say they are moderate and just two percent who call themselves liberal."
Do Americans have ‘Obama fatigue?’
CHICAGO – Are the magazine cover stories on Barack Obama and the blanket coverage of him on television and in newspapers creating voter “fatigue” with the candidate?
A Pew poll released this week suggests the Democratic presidential candidate may be overexposed and Obama himself did not disagree when asked about it on his campaign plane on Thursday.
Forty-eight percent of voters in the Pew survey said they have been “hearing too much” about Obama. By contrast, only 26 percent said they had heard too much about McCain.
Asked during a flight to Chicago whether there was “Obama fatigue,” the Democrat told reporters, “We are going to correct that this week, hopefully with your help.” Obama leaves on Friday for a week-long trip to Hawaii, where he grew up and where the grandmother who helped to raise him still lives.
Obama plans to spend as much of the time as possible out of the limelight as he takes a break from the campaign trail with his wife, two daughters and some family friends. Most of his aides are remaining at his Chicago campaign headquarters. His vacation coincides with the start of the Summer Olympics in Beijing. He will be back in the spotlight in the run-up to the Aug. 25-28 Democratic convention in Denver.
“We had the longest primary in history. And so I can imagine that folks need a break from politics and they didn’t really get one like they normally do,” Obama said.
“I think that the majority of people have been fed a constant stream of political chatter and I’m sure that having a couple weeks off and enjoying the Olympics is probably what the doctor ordered for everybody,” he added.
“OBama bin Lying” maybe untrustworthy and he maybe the antichrist! Maybe? We have no history to tell us who he really is all that we know is that he is constantly disavowing everybody and everything in his life. It stated with his name when he changed it to Barry and then when it was “cool” with his friends to be black he changed it to Barack. He disavows his father and then his mother. He went from being of mixed descent to being black. After 20+ years of supporting a Pastor he disavows him when his teachings finally become public. He first went to this church just because it was the largest congregation in his district so probably his faith is only political too? He says one thing to this group and then turns and says the opposite to the next. I would never follow him into any battle. HE CANNOT BE TRUSTED!
Pew’s identification of abortion as the main issue is not an accurate measure of the importance of the issue of abortion to the health care debate. A more accurate measure would be to ask a simple question. Would you support a bill that would have your taxes pay for medicaly unnecessary abortions. I am certian that the majority would vote NO!